


The Twenty-Sixth of December

by jimmymcgools



Series: Missing Scenes [3]
Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mailroom-Era, One Shot, POV Kim Wexler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28283097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jimmymcgools/pseuds/jimmymcgools
Summary: A missing scene from my ficA Controlled Burn. This takes place just after Chapter Fifteen.
Relationships: Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman/Kim Wexler
Series: Missing Scenes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020253
Comments: 15
Kudos: 43





	The Twenty-Sixth of December

The mattress sinks behind her, first a small dip as he wakes, then a heavier one as he slides out of bed. His footsteps are soft over the carpet, soft in a careful, studied way. The toilet flushes and the faucet runs. 

She pulls the blanket higher over her left shoulder. Warmth comes from beneath his comforter like a radiator. The soft footsteps return, padding past the foot of the bed. 

She opens her eyes.

The other side of his apartment is filled with sunlight, stretching in through the old lace curtains. He hunts through his fridge, through his kitchen cabinets. Freckles spread over his back. His boxers are blue and familiar. 

She shifts upright. One of his t-shirts is slung over the edge of his nightstand. It’s dark green, an old DuPage shirt. She hasn’t seen it in a while. There’s a hole in the hem. She pulls it on, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

Jimmy glances over from the small kitchenette. 

She tilts her head. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says. He grins, and it actually reaches his eyes. They crinkle. 

She inhales. “You’re up early.”

“Actually,” he says, drawing out the word, “I was just making you breakfast.” He holds up a pale green bowl.

There’s a box of toasted oats on the counter, cardboard flaps sticking up. She feels the smile on her face. “Your favorite? You shouldn’t have.”

Jimmy chuckles. “Well, I’ll get ya a spoon, anyway.” He rifles through a kitchen drawer then pads back over to the bed. He waits for her to prop herself up on the pillows. Holds out the bowl. “Here.”

She takes the bowl and the two spoons. Their handles are criss-crossed. 

He whistles as he moves around the foot of the bed and over to the closet. It’s a tuneless, crackling sound, light and airy. There’s seems to be a lightness in all of him, in all the places where last night he was heavy. Where he’s been heavy for weeks. 

She smiles. “What’s got you so happy?”

“Nothing,” he says, his head amongst his clothes. It comes out as one syllable: _Nu’un._

“No?”

He peeks back out and shrugs with his whole face somehow, a scrunching expression. The brightness in his eyes gets stronger before he turns away again. 

She dips a spoon into the bowl and eats a mouthful of the sugary cereal. The milk is cold and sweet. 

From somewhere in the darkness, he pulls out a long-sleeved shirt, one she hasn’t seen before. It’s purple and white and blue, densely patterned. He slips his arms into it with his back to her then turns toward the room, looking down at his fingers as they do up the buttons. He gets about halfway, then glances at her. His face flickers. “What?” 

“What _is_ that?” she says, leaning her head closer. “Is it paisley?” 

He looks down again. “I think it’s purple?”

She chuckles as he climbs back onto the bed, balancing on his knees. “Did you ask the tailor for something in his finest bus-seat? Or a grandmother’s sofa?” 

“Hey,” he says, settling beside her, “the ladies back home _loved_ this.” 

“Sure.” She scoops another spoonful of cereal into her mouth. “Sure they did.” 

He laughs loosely. His knee bumps against hers. It’s warm, radiating the heat of whatever it is that thawed inside him overnight. He leaves his knee there, bare skin to bare skin. He takes the bowl of cereal from her when she offers it. 

She slides her empty spoon out of her mouth. “So, you going back to Chuck’s today?”

He shrugs and smiles. “Probably, Mom’s still over there.” He crunches through a mouthful of cereal then looks sideways to her. “But they can live without me for a bit.”

She nods. “Tough day yesterday?” 

“No!” he says quickly. “No, it was real nice, actually.” His face draws together. “Been a long time.”

She waits, knowing he’ll keep talking if he wants to. 

He does. “I haven’t actually done a family Christmas like that since…I dunno. Five years? Six?” 

She looks at their knees touching. Looks at her own legs emerging from the hole-lined hem of the big green DuPage shirt. Looks back to him. “What did you do last Christmas, then?” 

He grins. “You mean yesterday?”

She nudges her knee. “C’mon.” 

And Jimmy makes a quiet noise. “Last year…” he begins finally, “last year I think I only realised Christmas’d actually happened after they took down the holiday windows at Macy’s.” His gaze flicks downward, and his eyes have that closed-off look they get sometimes. Like he’s looking away from a dark place, like his pupils are shrinking in the light. “Maybe we had an extra round at Arno’s that night,” he adds, eventually. “Threw bottles against the wall. Like fireworks, right?”

She doesn’t say anything, just presses her knee closer. He eats more toasted oats. The sound of crunching fills the warm apartment. She imagines the red and green Macy’s windows along city streets and the blue alleys out the back of city bars until he finishes. He passes over the empty bowl and she sets it on the nightstand. 

“What about you, then?” he says, leaning against the pillows and rubbing a hand over his mouth. “What did you do last Christmas?”

She thinks back. “Andrea had some friends around,” she says. She looks at nothing, seeing the group of them around the coffee table. “I think we played Scrabble.”

He chuckles and nudges her. “Oh, _I_ meant yesterday.”

Yesterday?

(And she hears a phone ringing, hears the shrill bell of it on the wall, and she knows who’s on the other end of the line, knows without knowing how she knows it.)

She shakes her head. She lowers her hand to his thigh, her palm half on the edge of his boxers. 

Jimmy raises his leg into the touch, just slightly. “See,” he says, voice light, “because I thought you said you _missed me_ yesterday…” He tilts his head, bangs falling over his eyebrow.

And she says softly, “Did I?”

“Mm,” he murmurs. “You said you just sat around, all alone, missing me…” 

She raises her eyebrows and shifts closer to him. Lifts her hand from his leg, pressing it to his cheek. Transferring warmth from one place on him to the other. She draws in. “You fishing for something?” 

Close to her, his breath on her face, he says, “Maybe.”

She laughs, just above a breath, too. “Well, I dunno,” she manages. She brushes her thumb over his lower lip. It’s dry and smooth, and she leans in and finally captures the warmth she’s just transferred there, finally takes it for herself. Her lips hum with it. She presses closer. Against his mouth, she says, “Who’d miss this?” 

He chuckles now too. His hand comes up to her hair, like it always does. 

She lets herself be drawn over him by the gentle tug of it, breaking the kiss even as she tries not too, getting one leg over his thigh and straddling it. Then presses her lips to his again. Shifts her hand down to where his neck meets his shoulder, curling her fingers over the curve and bone there. 

Until Jimmy pulls back. He looks up at her, his eyes wide and hopeful and that new kind of bright. The kind of bright she hadn’t seen in him since the HHM Christmas party, since before that, even. His lips are shining.

(And she wants to know how he managed to get through so much life but still look like that, because even when the dark spots come over him it’s still a bright kind of darkness, she thinks, bright and loud like back-alley fireworks.)

She runs her hand down his chest and over the paisley shirt, then pulls away. Touches the fabric again. Her lips twitch. 

His chest rises and falls beneath the shirt. “No?”

She laughs breathlessly. Strokes her fingertips over it. “Feels like…oil.” 

Jimmy grins lopsidedly. “Yeah, man,” he drawls, accent stronger than usual. His eyes blaze and he rises up. Kisses her again, tangles his fingers in her hair again. 

Between their chests, she unbuttons the shirt, the fabric slick beneath her fingers, then she sweeps it open. She traces her palms around to either side of his waist. The silk flows over the back of her hands, almost cold, almost not there at all. His skin burns beneath it. 

And she pushes herself up onto her knees, rising above him. Drifts her hands back up to cradle his head, tucking the sides of her forefingers behind his ears, scrunching her fingertips in the hair at the base of his skull. 

Her thumbs linger on the soft part under his chin, around his throat. His jaw moves against the easy pressure. She doesn’t let go. 

He makes a noise against her mouth, dark at the back of his throat, just beneath her thumbs. His grip tightens on her waist, and he pushes her back. She lowers herself down onto her heels again. Feels him shift against the knee she’s got between his legs. He makes another quiet sound. 

“Here,” he murmurs. His hands move against her waist, nudging her enough that she gets the idea. She twists her leg off him, her hands splayed on his stomach for leverage, and rolls back over until she’s leaning against the headboard again. He watches her. 

(And it’s so different from last night, the way he’s looking at her now, but it reminds her of the quietness of yesterday anyway, as he moves over her, as she shimmies down the bed and he looks at her from above and his face is all in shadow and his breath is close.) 

She makes room for him to fit between her legs, and he leans down and kisses her. She curls her fingers into the sides of his head again, and he pushes her green shirt up, thumb trailing over the skin that’s revealed beneath it. She breaks away from his lips and pulls him down even closer, arms around him, mouthing against the curve between his shoulder and neck. 

Into his neck, she murmurs, “Yeah, who’d miss this?” and she can feel his laughter on her lips. He trembles with it then exhales. And he shifts, lowering his whole weight onto her. His paisley shirt is open, his bare stomach hot on the strip of her own skin beneath the DuPage shirt. 

(And the heaviness of him on her surrounds her, closes her in, closes her in the way you close a circle, in the way you close a door, because being closed is just the touch of things connecting, right? And she can feel everything closing to one warm layer and spreading beneath her skin, closing inside her and him amongst it.)

He’s moving down her body. He runs his hand over the rise of her ribcage. Kisses the empty-feeling space in the middle, between the bones, then keeps moving, his mouth running down and down until he’s lying on his stomach between her legs. 

She reaches back for a pillow from behind her, dragging it to prop up her head so she can keep looking at him. He pushes her shirt up further and she watches his hand trail over her skin, and it’s like the sight of it is separate from the sensation, his warm palm coming up over her breast, thumb tracing the edge of her nipple.

“Jimmy,” she murmurs, and he smiles like he always does when she says his name. She says it again. 

He hums and presses his cheek to the inside of her thigh then turns and kisses the softness there. His hand runs back over the rise and fall of her ribcage, light and teasing. 

She lifts her hips and he gently pushes her down. 

And he looks at her again, eyes sparkling. “You fishing for something?”

“God, yes,” she gasps, and he grins wider, halfway to a smirk, blue eyes so open and so bright, and she leans back on the pillow, squeezing hers shut. 

(But she can still see him in the red light behind her eyelids, anyway, still see him like the spark of red fireworks going off in blue alleys.)

And his mouth moves inward along her thigh, getting closer and closer. She twists her hand in the bedspread and bucks up. The splayed hand on her stomach presses down again. He doesn’t tease her for it this time, just keeps going, slowly slowly, closer closer. 

She grips his forearm, feels her nails digging tight into the silk shirt and the skin beneath it. She can feel the closeness spreading beneath her skin again, and it’s like she’s the warm one now, like she’s the one passing the heat through to him, as she finally reaches down and tangles her fingers in his hair. Holds him in place. 

He works slowly, sucking lightly first and then stronger, until she’s digging into his scalp, until she’s grinding against his upper lip. She feels him moan, the vibrations spreading through her body, spreading through his palm on her belly. 

She says his name again, and he trails his hands down, over her hips and along her thighs to her knees, and he draws her legs together, until the insides of her thighs are pressing against the backs of her hands as she holds his head, a double-grip. 

His mouth on her is wet, tongue burning with warmth. She pushes up into the pressure, pushes and pushes, until his hands snap back to hold her down again, fingers splayed on her stomach, but then soon he’s the one pulling her closer, grabbing the soft place where her legs meet her hips and dragging her up to him, and she’s curling toward him and saying his name until it all shatters in red. 

* * *

He rubs a green towel over his hair vigorously, standing at the base of the bed. He’s in jeans and one of his familiar t-shirts, white and blue. He pulls the towel away from his head, hair fluffy and damp. Turns and tosses the towel back into the bathroom with a hollow thud, then wanders back to the bed.

“Get you anything?” he says. 

She shakes her head, leaning back on the bed. 

“Think I do actually have something clean in there somewhere, if you need it,” he says, nodding to the closet. 

Kim looks up from the white towel wrapped around her to paisley shirt that’s crumpled at the edge of the bed. She can still feel the liquid texture of it on her skin. 

He must catch her gaze because he laughs. “No purple.” 

“None at all?” she says, lifting an eyebrow. 

He chuckles again. “Well, maybe a _little_ purple.” The bed sinks, and he lies sideways, perpendicular to her. His head is down by her hips, his cheek propped on his hand. “But, see?” he says, and with his other hand he pokes softly at her towel-covered waist. “The ladies love it.”

She swats his hand, then closes her eyes and leans back against the headboard. 

“What?” 

She shakes her head and says, “Just thinking of my regrets.”

“Oh really?”

She opens her eyes to see his sideways face looking up at her. She lets the smile win. “Yeah. Might have to go walk out into the street.”

He chuckles. “Got it.” He curls closer, lowering his cheek to the bedspread, the top of his head matching the inward curve of her waist like a jigsaw piece. “I’ll just wait here while you decide, okay?”

She weaves her fingers through his damp hair. “Okay.” She brushes the orange-brown threads back from his forehead. 

He hums, and then softly: “Merry Christmas.” 

She runs her thumb along his crown. “Not Christmas anymore, you know.”

He shakes his head, hair catching in her fingers. “It’s still Christmas on the West Coast.”

“Ah,” she says. “The west coast. Of—where, exactly?”

He shrugs with his face again. His eyes are still closed. 

She rakes her fingers through his bangs. “Maybe the Land of Mu.”

“Mm,” he says agreeably. He hums again. “See, there’s always a west coast somewhere.” 

She laughs softly. “Then Merry Christmas from somewhere, Jimmy.” 

He smiles. Tilts his head down toward to the bedspread. “Mm, better. Less of a Scrooge.” He shifts a little beneath her palm, rubbing his forehead on it, and his smile lingers for a while longer before it falls. His face draws together. And he murmurs, “D’you think his name was really McDuck?”

“Who, the duck?”

His forehead creases and he huffs. “The old guy.”

“In the Dickens novel?” she says, and he nods beneath her hand, his forehead relaxing. “Of course it was.” 

Barely audible, almost an exhale: “Good. Yeah, good.” He turns closer to the bedspread. A short time later, his voice comes again, words slow, muffled by the beige comforter: “Today’s Saturday, right?”

She makes a soft noise of agreement. 

“‘Kay,” he murmurs. “Okay, good.” 

She watches as his face relaxes into the easy mask of sleep, as his breathing evens out and his mouth falls open. His chest rises and falls. His eyelids flutter on his cheeks. 

(And she already feels hollow again, already feels a gap inside her, and a part of her hates it, hates her body for being so obvious about everything, hates it for carrying her here in the first place, for needing him, and for already feeling so goddamn open and empty again—)

But she runs her fingers through his hair, five points of connection, of transferred warmth. Of bright darkness. A circle close and closed. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading, and a special thank you to anyone who's read or kudosed or commented on any of my other fics this year, too! i'm overflowing with gratitude for the kindness you've all shown me over this little journey, and i wish i could think of a better way to thank you. for now, a little holiday one shot. 🎁
> 
> i hope you all have happy and safe holidays, and take care ♥️♥️♥️


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